Before the longlist

Since the Bath Children’s Novel Award 2018 closed to entries on December 2nd our first stage readers have been matching entries with our longlisting team of Junior Judges, professional readers, editors and writers including former winners and shortlistees.

The reading team is now voting for the novels which will go forward to the longlist stage. Each reader votes YES or NO to the question: does this extract and synopsis make you want to read the full?

We don’t have a minimum or maximum list length and will longlist every book the voting suggests could go on to win. Sometimes a small number of books dominate the votes; other years the votes fall more widely and historically our lists have ranged from 17 to 26 titles depending on how the votes fall.

In addition to the regular YES votes, each of our professional readers also has the option to award one ‘golden vote’. These may be given to a standout entry the reader can’t stop thinking about and would especially love to read in full. Entries which attract one or more golden vote are automatically longlisted in addition to the entries with the most regular YES votes.

Between 13th and 17th December we’ll be sharing ‘snippets’ from the comments which accompanied YES votes on our twitter account @bathnovelaward. These ‘snippets’ are searchable (or mutable) under the tag #BNAkids and here’s an example from last year’s award:

#BNAkids A boy has to hide in a cage whenever there's a full moon because his family are werewolves. I want to know if he gets eaten. YES

Due to the volume of votes which come in, only a representative selection of YES vote comments are tweeted. Any golden votes are tweeted as they come in and this is usually during the last few days before the longlist announcement.

The Bath Children’s Novel Award longlist announcement will be posted on our website at noon GMT on Tuesday 18th December 2018. We’ll also email a prompt to all entrants once the announcement is up. Writers of longlisted titles will then be be invited to submit their full manuscript by 20th December 2018 for the final judging stages where the Junior Judges choose a shortlist for literary agent Hilary Delamere.

The very best of luck to all entrants, we can’t wait to see the votes!

Posts: The Bath Novel Awards

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